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The demand for indoor localization has increased in fields such as indoor navigation, virtual reality and emergency response. Traditionally, hardware-based indoor positioning methods require a large number of devices to be deployed and require high maintenance costs. Vision-based localization methods offer a low-cost option for this purpose. Visual Localization has two typical pipeline: end-to-end study and traditional pose estimation based on PnP(Perspective-n-point). However, the quality of the retrieved images and 2D-3D correspondences is vital to the precision and recall of the traditional method. In this paper we try to partly overcome the mentioned drawback by eliminate the error retrieval images with multi-features, and we use several retrieved images to collect enough 2D-3D correspondences to improve the robustness against error input. We also filter the outliers during forming the 2D-3D correspondences with RANSAC and Lowe’s ratio test. As a supplement to the various indoor visual localization dataset production, we introduce a pipeline which can generate point clouds and mesh model via our integrated RGB-D cameras.

Many functionally relevant ferroic phenomena in quantum materials can be manipulated by driving the lattice coherently with optical and terahertz pulses. New physical phenomena and non-equilibrium phases that have no equilibrium counterpart have been discovered following these protocols. The underlying structural dynamics has been mostly studied by recording the average atomic position along dynamical structural coordinates with elastic scattering methods. However, crystal lattice fluctuations, which are known to influence phase transitions in equilibrium, are also expected to determine these dynamics but have rarely been explored. Here, we study the driven dynamics of the quantum paraelectric SrTiO3, in which mid-infrared drives have been shown to induce a metastable ferroelectric state. Crucial in these physics is the competition between the polar instability and antiferrodistortive rotations, which in equilibrium frustrate the formation of long-range ferroelectricity. We make use of high intensity mid-infrared optical pulses to resonantly drive a Ti-O stretching mode at 17 THz, and we measure the resulting change in lattice fluctuations using time-resolved x-ray diffuse scattering at a free electron laser. After a prompt increase, we observe a long-lived quench in R-point antiferrodistortive lattice fluctuations. The enhancement and reduction in lattice fluctuations are explained theoretically by considering fourth-order nonlinear phononic interactions and third-order coupling to the driven optical phonon and to lattice strain, respectively. These observations provide a number of new and testable hypotheses for the physics of light-induced ferroelectricity.

As the largest freshwater lake in China, Poyang Lake has been influenced by the urbanization process since the 1990s. Therefore, nutrient concentration data of Poyang Lake in the past three decades were selected for spatial and temporal heterogeneity analysis. The entropy-based method (EBM) was used to calculate the contribution weight of three independent driving factors (precipitation, agricultural land area, and urban land area) to nutrient concentrations in Poyang Lake in three different periods (1988-1997, 1998-2007, and 2008-2018). The results of this study showed that the concentrations of NH3-N and TN have similar trends over time, both of which have been increasing in this century, while the TP concentration has experienced a "decreasing-increasing" process. The nutrient concentrations in the eastern part of Poyang Lake were at the highest level in the whole lake after 1998, and this area has good conditions for the formation of algal blooms, which need special control and management. The effect of precipitation on the nutrient concentrations of the lake in the last thirty years was most prominent. The weight of agriculture's contribution to nutrient concentrations showed a significant upward trend during the first 20 years, and agriculture and urban construction weights remained stable after experiencing opposite changes in the first 20 years. In the future, precipitation in the Poyang Lake basin needs to be of high concern, and agricultural and urban pollution control measures need to be implemented continuously.

Recently, recommender system (RS) based on causal inference has gained much attention in the industrial community, as well as the states of the art performance in many prediction and debiasing tasks. Nevertheless, a unified causal analysis framework has not been established yet. Many causal-based prediction and debiasing studies rarely discuss the causal interpretation of various biases and the rationality of the corresponding causal assumptions. In this paper, we first provide a formal causal analysis framework to survey and unify the existing causal-inspired recommendation methods, which can accommodate different scenarios in RS. Then we propose a new taxonomy and give formal causal definitions of various biases in RS from the perspective of violating the assumptions adopted in causal analysis. Finally, we formalize many debiasing and prediction tasks in RS, and summarize the statistical and machine learning-based causal estimation methods, expecting to provide new research opportunities and perspectives to the causal RS community.

Supplemental material, sj-docx-1-jdr-10.1177_00220345221129806 for Bioinspired Anti-demineralization Enamel Coating for Orthodontics by S. Peng, T. Sang, H. Wang, Y. Guan, Y. Deng, P. Wang, Z. Huang, Z. Ye and J. Wu in Journal of Dental Research

Supplemental material, sj-docx-1-jdr-10.1177_00220345221078775 for Fn1 Regulates the Third Pharyngeal Pouch Patterning and Morphogenesis by X. Wang, Y. Liang, Z. Zhu, W. Li, B. Shi, Y. Deng, C. Li and O. Sha in Journal of Dental Research

Supplemental material, sj-docx-1-jdr-10.1177_00220345221078775 for Fn1 Regulates the Third Pharyngeal Pouch Patterning and Morphogenesis by X. Wang, Y. Liang, Z. Zhu, W. Li, B. Shi, Y. Deng, C. Li and O. Sha in Journal of Dental Research

We report the results of thermodynamic measurements in external magnetic field of the cubic Ce-based cage compounds Ce$T_{2}$Cd$_{20}$ ($T$ = Ni,Pd). Our analysis of the heat-capacity data shows that the $\Gamma_7$ doublet is the ground state multiplet of the Ce$^{3+}$ ions. Consequently, for the $\Gamma_7$ doublet it can be theoretically shown that the Ruderman-Kittel-Kasuya-Yosida (RKKY) interaction between the localized Ce moments mediated by the conduction electrons, must vanish at temperatures much lower than the energy separating the ground state doublet from the first excited $\Gamma_8$ quartet. Our findings provide an insight as to why no long range order has been observed in these compounds down to temperatures in the millikelvin range., Comment: 5 pages, 4 figures

The New Experiments With Spheres-Gas (NEWS-G) collaboration intends to achieve $\mathrm{sub-GeV/c^{2}}$ Weakly Interacting Massive Particles (WIMPs) detection using Spherical Proportional Counters (SPCs). SPCs are gaseous detectors relying on ionization with a single ionization electron energy threshold. The latest generation of SPC for direct dark matter searches has been installed at SNOLAB in Canada in 2021. This article details the different processes involved in the fabrication of the NEWS-G experiment. Also outlined in this paper are the mitigation strategies, measurements of radioactivity of the different components, and estimations of induced background event rates that were used to quantify and address detector backgrounds., Comment: 18 pages, 9 figures, 5 tables, to be published

Objective: Studies have abstracted the partial mechanism of long non-coding RNA nuclear enriched abundant transcript 1 (NEAT1) in lung cancer, but its reciprocal with microRNA-107/Forkhead box k1 (miR-107/FOXK1) is not disclosed clearly. Hence, the mechanism of NEAT1/miR-107/FOXK1 was delved out in lung cancer.Methods: NEAT1, miR-107 and FOXK1 expression in clinical cancer tissues were determined, along with their interactions. The relation between the survival of lung cancer patients and NEAT1 expression was determined. NEAT1 and/or miR-107-related lentivirus or plasmid were transfected into A549 cells, after which cell biological functions were tested. Tumors were xenografted in mice to observe tumor formation and cell apoptosis.Results: High NEAT1 and FOXK1 and low miR-107 levels were tested in lung cancer tissues. High NEAT1 was connected with low overall survival of lung cancer patients. Depleting NEAT1 or augmenting miR-107 inhibited the biological functions of lung cancer cells. Depleted NEAT1 suppressed tumor-forming ability of A549 cells in vivo. Inhibited miR-107 antagonized depleted NEAT1-mediated effects on A549 cells. NEAT1 regulated FOXK1 by competitively binding miR-107.Conclusion: Silenced NEAT1 suppresses lung cancer development through elevating miR-107 and reducing FOXK1 expression, which supplies a plan to treat lung cancer.

Chronic kidney disease (CKD) is a common complication of type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM). Approximately one-third of patients with T2DM also have CKD. In clinical trial studies, several anti-diabetic medications (ADM) show evidence of preventing the progression of CKD. Biguanides (e.g., metformin) are widely accepted as the first line medication. However, the comparativeness effectiveness of second line ADMs on CKD outcomes in T2DM is unclear. In addition, results from clinical trials may not generalize into routine clinical practice. In this study, we aimed to investigate the association of second line ADMs with incident CKD and CKD hospitalization in T2DM patients using real-world data from electronic health records. Our study found that treatment with sodium-glucose cotransporter 2 (SGLT-2) inhibitors was significantly associated with a lower risk of CKD incidence in both primary analysis (hazard ratio, 0.43; 95% CI, [0.22;0.87]; p-value,0.02) (SU) as a second-line ADM. Treatment with a dipeptidyl peptidase 4 (DPP-4) inhibitor was significantly associated with lower CKD incidence (hazard ratio, 0.7; 95% CI, [0.53;0.96]; p-value, 0.03) and lower CKD hospitalization events (hazard ratio, 0.6; 95% CI, [0.37; 0.96]; p-value, 0.04) in the primary analysis. However, both associations were not significant in the sensitivity analysis. We did not observe significant association between use of GLP-1, TZD, insulin and CKD incidence or hospitalization compared to use of SU as the second-line ADM.

Optically levitated nanodumbbells in vacuum are excellent candidates for thermodynamics, macroscopic quantum mechanics, precision measurements and quantum sensing. Silica (SiO2) material, with extremely low absorption of near-infrared light and super mechanical strength, has been the most potential material for optically levitated systems. Here we synthesize high-purity solid SiO2 nanodumbbells via Stöber method by introducing acetone for the induced aggregation of SiO2 nanospheres. The nanodumbbells show high uniformity and their sizes are tunable. Previous experimental results demonstrated that the synthetic nanodumbbells can be applied in GHz nanomechanical rotors and can withstand the tensile strength of over 13 GPa. This work supports batch production and high yield of SiO2 nanodumbbells, which engineers a new material platform to advance levitated optomechanics.

Transformer models have achieved great progress on computer vision tasks recently. The rapid development of vision transformers is mainly contributed by their high representation ability for extracting informative features from input images. However, the mainstream transformer models are designed with deep architectures, and the feature diversity will be continuously reduced as the depth increases, i.e., feature collapse. In this paper, we theoretically analyze the feature collapse phenomenon and study the relationship between shortcuts and feature diversity in these transformer models. Then, we present an augmented shortcut scheme, which inserts additional paths with learnable parameters in parallel on the original shortcuts. To save the computational costs, we further explore an efficient approach that uses the block-circulant projection to implement augmented shortcuts. Extensive experiments conducted on benchmark datasets demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method, which brings about 1% accuracy increase of the state-of-the-art visual transformers without obviously increasing their parameters and FLOPs.

Objective: Vascular smooth muscle cell (VSMC) plasticity plays a critical role in the development of atherosclerosis. Long noncoding RNAs (lncRNAs) are emerging as important regulators in the vessel wall and impact cellular function through diverse interactors. However, the role of lncRNAs in regulating VSMCs plasticity and atherosclerosis remains unclear. Approach and Results: We identified a VSMC-enriched lncRNA cardiac mesoderm enhancer-associated noncoding RNA (CARMN) that is dynamically regulated with progression of atherosclerosis. In both mouse and human atherosclerotic plaques, CARMN colocalized with VSMCs and was expressed in the nucleus. Knockdown of CARMN using antisense oligonucleotides in Ldlr(-/-) mice significantly reduced atherosclerotic lesion formation by 38% and suppressed VSMCs proliferation by 45% without affecting apoptosis. In vitro CARMN gain- and loss-of-function studies verified effects on VSMC proliferation, migration, and differentiation. TGF-beta 1 (transforming growth factor-beta) induced CARMN expression in a Smad2/3-dependent manner. CARMN regulated VSMC plasticity independent of the miR143/145 cluster, which is located in close proximity to the CARMN locus. Mechanistically, lncRNA pulldown in combination with mass spectrometry analysis showed that the nuclear-localized CARMN interacted with SRF (serum response factor) through a specific 600-1197 nucleotide domain. CARMN enhanced SRF occupancy on the promoter regions of its downstream VSMC targets. Finally, knockdown of SRF abolished the regulatory role of CARMN in VSMC plasticity. Conclusions: The lncRNA CARMN is a critical regulator of VSMC plasticity and atherosclerosis. These findings highlight the role of a lncRNA in SRF-dependent signaling and provide implications for a range of chronic vascular occlusive disease states.

Purpose To examine the single- and multiple-dose pharmacokinetics (PK), CYP3A inhibition potential of ipatasertib, and effect of food on PK of ipatasertib in patients with refractory solid tumors and a dedicated food effect assessment in healthy subjects. Methods The Phase I dose-escalation study enrolled patients with solid tumors in a standard 3 + 3 design with a 1 week washout after the first dose, followed by once-daily dosing on a 3-week-on/1-week-off schedule. In the expansion cohort, the effect of ipatasertib on CYP3A substrate (midazolam) was assessed by examining the change in midazolam exposure when dosed in the absence and presence of steady-state ipatasertib at 600 mg. The effect of food on ipatasertib PK was studied with ipatasertib administered in fed or fasted state (6 patients from Phase I patient study and 18 healthy subjects from the dedicated food effect study). Results Ipatasertib was generally well tolerated at doses up to 600 mg given daily for 21 days. Ipatasertib showed rapid absorption (t(max), 0.5-3 h), was dose-proportional over a range of 200-800 mg, had a median half-life (range) of 45.0 h (27.8-66.9 h), and had approximately two-fold accumulation following once-daily dosing. Midazolam exposure (AUC(0-infinity)) increased by 2.2-fold in the presence of ipatasertib. PK was comparable in subjects administered ipatasertib in a fed or fasted state. Conclusion Ipatasertib exhibited rapid absorption and was dose-proportional over a broad dose range. Ipatasertib appeared to be a moderate CYP3A inhibitor when administered at 600 mg and could be administered with or without food in clinical studies. Trail registration NCT01090960 (registered March 23, 2010); NCT02536391 (registered August 31, 2015).

Background Traumatic ossicular disruption (TOD) usually had a severe conductive hearing loss, the exploratory tympanotomy is critical for the diagnosis and improve hearing. Endoscopic ear surgery (EES) is becoming popular in the last decade, we conducted a retrospective study to explore the efficacy of EES for management of TOD and the accompanied injuries.Methods A retrospective study was performed on 18 ears (16 patients) of TOD with intact TM from May 2017 to Jun 2019 in our department. EES was conducted to check the ossicular chain anomalies, and to perform the ossiculoplasty and facial nerve (FN) decompression depending on the intraoperative findings. Hearing outcomes and surgical complications were assessed at 6 months postoperatively. Results The incus injury was the most common type of TOD, which was observed in 14 ears (77.8%), stapes suprastructure fracture was observed in 4 ears (22.2%). FN injury was found in 4 out of 13 ears with temporal bone fracture (TBF), the injury sites were mainly located in the perigeniculate area and the tympanic segment of FN. It showed the postoperative average pure-tone average (PTA) gain was 22.9 ± 9.5 dB, and the average ABG closure was 22.2 ± 8.3 dB, ABG closure to 20 dB or less and ABG closure to 10 dB or less were achieved in 18 ears (100%) and 14 ears (77.8%), respectively. The facial function achieved favorable recovery of House-Brackmann (H-B) grade Ⅰ (3 ears) and grade Ⅱ (1 ear) in all the 4 cases in 6 months after surgery. No iatrogenic FN paralysis and significant sensorineural hearing loss were observed. Conclusions ESS was effective in diagnosis and management of TOD and the accompanied otologic injuries, such as FN paralysis, it showed favorable surgical outcomes. ESS provides an alternative method to manage TOD with the advantage of excellent vision and less invasion.

Objective: In the absence of known clinical symptoms, viruses were considered to be the most probable key pathogens of honey bee. Therefore, the aim of this study was to investigate the prevalence and distribution of honey bee viruses in managed Apis mellifera and Apis cerana in China. Results: We conducted a screening of 9 honey bee viruses on A. mellifera and A. cerana samples collected from 54 apiaries from 13 provinces in China. We found that the types and numbers of viruses significantly differed between A. mellifera and A. cerana. Black queen cell virus (BQCV), chronic bee paralysis virus (CBPV), Apis mellifera filamentous virus (AmFV) and Kakugo virus (DWV-C/KV) were the primary viruses found in A. mellifera colonies, whereas Chinese sacbrood bee virus (CSBV) and sacbrood bee virus (SBV) were the primary viruses found in A. cerana. The percentage infection of BQCV and CSBV were 84.6% and 61.6% in all detected samples. We first detected the occurrences of Varroa destructor virus-1(VDV-1, DWV-B) and DWV-C/KV in China but not ABPV in both A. mellifera and A. cerana.

Background As potential substitutes of traditional free-range rearing, floor rearing system (FRS) and net rearing system (NRS) are currently predominant dryland rearing systems. In this study, a total of 720 Nonghua ducks were assigned to a 2 × 3 factorial arrangement with two rearing systems (FRS and NRS) and three ages (4w, 8w, and 13w) to study the effects of FRS and NRS on production performance, antioxidant capacity and immune status. Results The production performance was mainly affected at 8w. Body weight, average daily gain, eviscerated weight and semi-eviscerated weight were higher in NRS at 8w, but carcass yield was decreased at 8w and 13w (P P P P > 0.05), but a tendency of better antioxidant capacity in NRS at 4w was found, while glutathione peroxidase (GSH-Px) activity was higher in NRS at 13w (P P ALP was higher in FRS at 13w, while ALP and IFN-γ in 13w-FRS were both higher than 4w-FRS and 8w-FRS (P

Background : Prior studies suggested that rapid weight change in infancy is associated with increased childhood and adulthood weight status. However, the weight change trajectory in early life over time and the extent to which childhood lifestyle behaviors may modify the risk of infant rapid weight change are not completely understood. Our aims were to characterize weight change trajectory early in life and explore its independent/combined effects with childhood lifestyle factors on adiposity outcomes at four years of age. Methods : In our ongoing birth cohort study, we used nine follow-up time points (birth, 3, 6, 9, 12, 18, 24 months, and 3, 4 years) to calculate the change between two adjacent weight for age z-scores ( WAZ-change ), and then to define WAZ-change trajectories using group-based trajectory modeling. The independent/combined effects of WAZ-change trajectories with each lifestyle factor ( eating behaviors , physical activity, media exposure time and total sleep duration) on childhood adiposity measures were determined using multivariate regression (where applicable). Results : A total of 84 (38.0%) children had a steady growth trajectory while the other 137 (62.0%) children had an early rapid growth trajectory most notable during the first six months. Compared to children with steady growth, children with early rapid growth had significantly higher adiposity status at four years of age - body mass index (β = 0.93, 95% CI: 0.59, 1.37), waist circumference (β = 1.90, 95% CI: 0.68, 3.12), and subcutaneous fat (β = 2.57, 95% CI: 1.13, 4.01). Moreover, WAZ-change trajectory not only had an independent effect, but also a combined effect with eating behaviors on most adiposity measures. Conclusions : We have identified two distinct weight change trajectories and described their independent and combined effects with eating behaviors on childhood adiposity measures. Larger samples and a longer period of observation through childhood are needed to replicate our findings.

Large superelastic deformation in ferroelastic-ferroelectrics (FMs) is a complex phenomenon involving multiple mechanisms operating simultaneously. Understanding how these mechanisms contribute corporately is critical to apply this useful property to the intrinsically brittle FMs, which can therefore display both excellent functional and mechanical performance. Here, we have directly observed and quantitatively analyzed in situ in a transmission electron microscope the three main mechanisms of twinning domain, phase transformation and mobile point defect contributing to extremely large superelastic deformation in single-crystal BaTiO3 (5.0% strain) and Pb(Mg1/3Nb2/3)O3-PbTiO3 (10.1% strain). Our results reveal the hierarchical origin of large recoverable strain in “brittle” FMs.

Background: Watermelon (Citrullus lanatus), a major fresh fruit, is planted worldwide. Because double haploid plants may be used as parents to shorten watermelon breeding cycle, the present study optimized conditions for regenerating haploid plants from ovaries without pollination.Results: The results revealed that, the 10% sodium hypochlorite sterilized for 10 min is best for ovary enlargement. In addition, a dark culture period of 14 days promoted the ovary enlargement. The MS medium containing 0.5 mg/L NAA, 1.0 mg/L 6-BA and 0.5mg/L KT promoted the embryoid differentiation. The M2 medium containing 0.02 mg/L TDZ, 0.5 mg/L NAA, 0.5 mg/L 6-BA could be used for producing complete plants. The different genotypes affected the embryoid induction. The present study obtained regenerated plants that were established in field. Flow cytometry analyses revealed that the regenerated plants were haploid, diploid or tetraploid plant. The seedlings which were treated with culture medium can increase the chance of chromosome doubling. The SSR marker analyses showed that the diploid and tetraploid plants were homozygous at all six loci tested, indicating that these regenerated plants were double- or tetra-haploid plants.Conclusions: Haploid and homozygous diploid can be obtained through the culture of unpollinated ovary of watermelon, which is an effective way to innovate watermelon germplasm. The present study provides homozygous plants for future watermelon breeding.

An improved anti-noise morphology vision navigation algorithm is proposed for intelligent tractor tillage in a complex agricultural field environment. Firstly, the two key steps, Guided Filtering and improved anti-noise morphology navigation line extraction, were addressed in detail. Then the experiments were carried out in order to verify the effectiveness and advancement of the presented algorithm. Finally, the optimal template and its application condition were studied for improving the image processing speed. The comparison experiment results show that the YCbCr color space has minimum time consumption, 0.094 s, compared with HSV, HIS and 2R-G-B color spaces. The Guided Filtering method can enhance the new & old soil boundary effectively than any other methods such as Tarel, Multi-scale Retinex, Wavelet-based Retinex and Homomorphic Filtering, meanwhile, has the fastest processing speed of 0.113 s. The extracted soil boundary line of the improved anti-noise morphology algorithm has best precision and speed compared with other operators such as Sobel, Roberts, Prewitt and Log. After comparing different size of image template, the optimal template with the size of 140×260 pixels can meet high precision vision navigation while the course deviation angle is not more than 7.5°. The maximum tractor speed of the optimal template and global template are 51.41 km/h and 27.47 km/h respectively which can meet real-time vision navigation requirement of the smart tractor tillage operation in the field. The experimental vision navigation results demonstrated the feasibility of the autonomous vision navigation for tractor tillage operation in the field using the new & old soil boundary line extracted by the proposed improved anti-noise morphology algorithm which has broad application prospect.

Background: Species of Zanthoxylum (Sichuan pepper) are diverse and valuable economic trees that have been cultivated across Asia for thousands of years for their aromatic and medicinal properties. The current lack of transcriptome and EST-SSR data for these species represents a constraint with regards to identifying increasingly more diverse cultivars in China. This study was conducted to compare the transcriptome profiles of two Zanthoxylum species (Z. bungeanum and Z. armatum) and develop the EST-SSR markers to assess the genetic diversity in Sichuan pepper. Results: A total of 36.76 G high-quality clean data were screened for subsequent analysis. For Z. bungeanum and Z. armatum, 64,944 and 75,669 unigenes were obtained, respectively. After comparing different databases, we found that the highest number of unigenes (43,3198 and 49,638 for Z. bungeanum and Z. armatum, respectively) were annotated using the NR database. In addition, six pairs of EST-SSR markers were selected to determine the genetic diversity of 125 samples of three Zanthoxylum species. A population clustering dendrogram indicated that there was an average of four samples per population, with the number of allelic genes (Na) ranging from 1 to 1.4510 (average of 1.1462). The number of effective allelic genes (Ne) ranged from 1 to 1.2744 (average of 1.0971), whereas genetic diversity (Nei) ranged from 0 to 0.1486 (average of 0.05512) and Shannon genetic diversity (I) ranged from 0 to 0.2177 (average 0.08123). In individual clustering dendrograms, the 125 samples were divided into five cohorts. Cohort I contained Z. bungeanum and its varieties, cohort II included Z. armatum and its varieties, cohort III contained mostly Z. piperitum and two other Z. bungeanum samples, and cohorts IV and V each contained only two samples, with genetic distances of 0 to 1.14 between them. Conclusion: In this study, we analyzed the comparative transcriptome data of two Zanthoxylum species, for which we assessed genetic diversity using EST-SSR primers derived from their EST information. The genetic diversity of 125 samples obtained from the three Zanthoxylum species Z. bungeanum, Z. armatum and Z. piperitum was relatively low, which can probably be attributed to apomixis.

© 2019, Springer-Verlag London Ltd., part of Springer Nature. Multicriteria decision-making process explicitly evaluates multiple conflicting criteria in decision making. The conventional decision-making approaches assumed that each agent is independent, but the reality is that each agent aims to maximize personal benefit which causes a negative influence on other agents’ behaviors in a real-world competitive environment. In our study, we proposed an interval-valued Pythagorean prioritized operator-based game theoretical framework to mitigate the cross-influence problem. The proposed framework considers both prioritized levels among various criteria and decision makers within five stages. Notably, the interval-valued Pythagorean fuzzy sets are supposed to express the uncertainty of experts, and the game theories are applied to optimize the combination of strategies in interactive situations. Additionally, we also provided illustrative examples to address the application of our proposed framework. In summary, we provided a human-inspired framework to represent the behavior of group decision making in the interactive environment, which is potential to simulate the process of realistic humans thinking.

Load cycle counting is an important tool for estimating the fatigue life of structures. Rainflow counting methods have been developed to count load reversals and extract load cycles from load time histories. Rainflow counting methods were originally developed to assess fatigue damage associated with mechanical cycling where time-dependent factors such as dwell time and loading rate were not considered significant contributors to fatigue failure. However, loading rate and hold times can be significant factors in some fatigue failures, such as solder interconnects under temperature cycling. In these cases, fatigue life models may require the load transition time and load hold times to account for time-dependent material changes, such as creep. This paper develops a new multi-parameter cycle counting algorithm that provides a range-based hold time estimation for use with time-dependent fatigue damage models. To show the applicability of the new method, the life of solder joints under a complex thermal cycling regime was estimated using the data extracted by the new multi-parameter cycle counting algorithm. This life estimate was then compared with test results and found to be within the estimated uncertainty bounds.

Micro-organisms harbouring the nosZ gene convert N2O to N2 and play a critical role in reducing global N2O emissions. As higher denitrifier diversity can result in higher denitrification rates, here we aimed to understand the diversity, composition and spatial structure of N2O-reducing microbial assemblages in forest soils across a large latitudinal and temperature gradient. We sequenced nosZ gene amplicons of 126 soil samples from six forests with mean annual soil temperatures (MAST) ranging from 3.7 to 25.3°C and tested predictions of the metabolic theory of ecology (MTE) and metabolic-niche theory (MNT). As predicted, α-diversity of nosZ communities increased with increasing MAST, within-site β-diversity decreased and two (pH and soil moisture) of the three niche widths examined were larger with increasing MAST. We calculated β-nearest taxon distance and Raup–Crick metric to quantify the relative influence of the assembly processes determining nosZ assemblage structure. Environmental selection was the primary process driving assemblage structure in all six forests. Homogenizing dispersal was also important at one site, which could be explained by the site's much lower variability in soil chemistry. We used canonical correspondence analysis and multiple regression on matrices to examine relationships between nosZ communities and environmental factors, and found that temperature and spatial distance were significant predictors of nosZ assemblage structure. Overall our results support both theories (MTE and MNT) tested, showing that higher temperatures are correlated with higher local diversity, wider niche breadths and lower within-site turnover rates. A plain language summary is available for this article.

The abundance–adaptation hypothesis argues that taxa with more individuals and faster generation times will have more evolutionary ‘experiments’ allowing expansion into, and diversification within, novel habitats. Thus, as older taxa have produced more individuals over time, and smaller taxa have higher population sizes and faster generation times, the Latitudinal Diversity Gradients (LDGs) of these clades should show shallower slopes. We describe the LDGs for archaea, bacteria, fungi, invertebrates and trees from six North American forests. For three focal groups – bacteria, ants, and trees – older taxa had shallower LDG slopes than the more recent, terminal taxa. Across 12 orders of magnitude of body mass, LDG slopes were steeper in larger taxa. The slopes of LDGs vary systematically with body size and clade age, underscoring the non-canonical nature of LDGs. The steepest LDG slopes were found for the largest organisms while the smallest, from bacteria to small litter-soil invertebrates, have shallower- to zero-slope LDGs. If tropical niche conservatism is the failure of clades to adapt to, and diversify in temperate habitats, then the steep LDGs of chordates and plants likely arise from the decreased ability of clades with large individuals to adapt to the multiple challenges of extra-tropical life.

In this paper, we consider the existence of sign-changing solutions for fractional elliptic equations of the form \begin{equation*} \left\{\begin{array}{ll} (-\Delta)^s u=f(x,u) & \text{in}\ \Omega , \\ u=0 & \text{in}\ \mathbb R^N\setminus \Omega, \end{array} \right. \end{equation*} where $s\in(0,1)$ and $\Omega\subset \mathbb R^N$ is a bounded smooth domain. Since the non-local operator $(-\Delta)^s$ is involved in the equation, the variational functional of the equation has totally different properties from the local cases. By introducing some new ideas, we prove, via variational method and the method of invariant sets of descending flow, that the problem has a positive solution, a negative solution and a sign-changing solution under suitable conditions. Moreover, if $f(x,u)$ satisfies a monotonicity condition, we show that the problem has a least energy sign-changing solution with its energy is strictly larger than that of the ground state solution of Nehari type. We also obtain an unbounded sequence of sign-changing solutions if $f(x,u)$ is odd in $u$.

Neural attention has become central to many state-of-the-art models in natural language processing and related domains. Attention networks are an easy-to-train and effective method for softly simulating alignment; however, the approach does not marginalize over latent alignments in a probabilistic sense. This property makes it difficult to compare attention to other alignment approaches, to compose it with probabilistic models, and to perform posterior inference conditioned on observed data. A related latent approach, hard attention, fixes these issues, but is generally harder to train and less accurate. This work considers variational attention networks, alternatives to soft and hard attention for learning latent variable alignment models, with tighter approximation bounds based on amortized variational inference. We further propose methods for reducing the variance of gradients to make these approaches computationally feasible. Experiments show that for machine translation and visual question answering, inefficient exact latent variable models outperform standard neural attention, but these gains go away when using hard attention based training. On the other hand, variational attention retains most of the performance gain but with training speed comparable to neural attention., Comment: accepted by NIPS 2018

Wheeler's delayed-choice experiment investigates the indeterminacy of wave-particle duality and the role played by the measurement apparatus in quantum theory. Due to the inconsistency with classical physics, it has been generally believed that it is not possible to reproduce the delayed-choice experiment using a hidden variable theory. Recently, it was shown that this assumption was incorrect, and in fact Wheeler's delayed-choice experiment can be explained by a causal two dimensional hidden-variable theory [R. Chaves, G. B. Lemos, and J. Pienaar, Phys. Rev. Lett. 120, 190401 (2018)]. Here, we carry out an experiment of a device-independent delayed-choice experiment using photon states that are space-like separated, and demonstrate a loophole-free version of the delayed-choice protocol that is consistent with quantum theory but inconsistent with any causal two-dimensional hidden variable theory. This salvages Wheeler's thought experiment and shows that causality can be used to test quantum theory in a complementary way to the Bell and Leggett-Garg tests.

© The Institution of Engineering and Technology. Single inductor dual-output (SIDO) DC-DC converters are attractive in diverse applications such as renewable energy systems and electric vehicles, due to its favourable advantages of reduced magnetic core and high-power density. However, in conventional SIDO converters, severe cross-regulation problem is caused by the multiplex of inductor current, resulting in deteriorated dynamic performance. To alleviate the cross-regulation problem, a new family of dual-output DC-DC converters is proposed in this paper, which employs a coupled inductor to substitute the inductor in SIDO converters. The proposed converters can achieve improved dynamic performance while keeping the advantage of reduced magnetic core. Moreover, the number of semiconductor devices is also reduced in comparison with conventional SIDO converters, and soft-switching operation of switches is also achieved. Therefore, lower cost and higher power density are obtained. Topology derivation of proposed converters from conventional SIDO converters is firstly demonstrated in detail. After that, the operation principle, steady-state characteristics and small-signal model are provided. Finally, design example and experiment results are given to validate the merits of the proposed topology.

© 2017 American Chemical Society. Titanium dioxide gel monoliths were synthesized using an organic precursor and 0-30 vol % ethanol in water. The visible-light-activated proton pump, bacteriorhodopsin, in its native purple membrane form, was successfully encapsulated within the titanium dioxide gels. Absorption spectra showed that the folded functional state of the protein remained intact within gels made with 0 and 15 vol % ethanol and retained the ability to make reversible conformational changes associated with the photocycle within the gel made with 0 vol % ethanol. The photocatalytic activity of gels made with no ethanol was significantly detectable and gels made with 0-30 vol % ethanol were comparable to commercial crystalline nanoparticles in similar solution conditions when irradiated with UV light. Our results show that sol-gel-derived photocatalytic titanium dioxide can be made biocompatible for a membrane-associated protein by minimizing the amount of ethanol and maximizing the amount of water in the synthesis procedure. The entrapment of the membrane protein, bacteriorhodopsin, in sol-gel-derived titanium dioxide provides the first step in future explorations of this bionanocomposite for visible light photocatalysis, including hydrogen production.

© 2017 International Society for Microbial Ecology All rights reserved. Soil organic matter (SOM) stocks contain nearly three times as much carbon (C) as the atmosphere and changes in soil C stocks may have a major impact on future atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations and climate. Over the past two decades, much research has been devoted to examining the influence of warming on SOM decomposition in topsoil. Most SOM, however, is old and stored in subsoil. The fate of subsoil SOM under future warming remains highly uncertain. Here, by combining a long-term field warming experiment and a meta-analysis study, we showed that warming significantly increased SOM decomposition in subsoil. We also showed that a decade of warming promoted decomposition of subsoil SOM with turnover times of decades to millennia in a tall grass prairie and this effect was largely associated with shifts in the functional gene structure of microbial communities. By coupling stable isotope probing with metagenomics, we found that microbial communities in warmed soils possessed a higher relative abundance of key functional genes involved in the degradation of organic materials with varying recalcitrance than those in control soils. These findings suggest warming may considerably alter the stability of the vast pool of old SOM in subsoil, contributing to the long-term positive feedback between the C cycle and climate.

© 2017 American Chemical Society. To further understand the diversity and dynamics of SRB in response to substrate amendment, we sequenced genes coding for the dissimilatory sulfite reductase (dsrA) in groundwater samples collected after an emulsified vegetable oil (EVO) amendment, which sustained U(VI)-reducing conditions for one year in a fast-flowing aquifer. EVO amendment significantly altered the composition of groundwater SRB communities. Sequences having no closely related-described species dominated (80%) the indigenous SRB communities in nonamended wells. After EVO amendment, Desulfococcus, Desulfobacterium, and Desulfovibrio, known for long-chain-fatty-acid, short-chain-fatty-acid and H2oxidation and U(VI) reduction, became dominant accounting for 7 ± 2%, 21 ± 8%, and 55 ± 8% of the SRB communities, respectively. Succession of these SRB at different bioactivity stages based on redox substrates/products (acetate, SO4-2, U(VI), NO3-, Fe(II), and Mn(II)) was observed. Desulfovibrio and Desulfococcus dominated SRB communities at 4-31 days, whereas Desulfobacterium became dominant at 80-140 days. By the end of the experiment (day 269), the abundance of these SRB decreased but the overall diversity of groundwater SRB was still higher than non-EVO controls. Up to 62% of the SRB community changes could be explained by groundwater geochemical variables, including those redox substrates/products. A significant (P < 0.001) correlation was observed between groundwater U(VI) concentrations and Desulfovibrio abundance. Our results showed that the members of SRB and their dynamics were correlated significantly with slow EVO biodegradation, electron donor production and maintenance of U(VI)-reducing conditions in the aquifer.

© 2017 Cobalt disulfide (CoS2) is a promising thermal battery electrode material for its superior thermal stability and discharge performance. However, the low natural resource and poor air stability restrict its application in thermal battery fabrication. In this work, carbon coated CoS2composite was prepared by a facile one-pot hydrothermal method with glucose as carbon source. During the growth of CoS2, the glucose molecules were in situ adsorbed and carbonized on the surface of the as-synthesized CoS2, and the resultant carbon coating provided improved electrical conductivity and discharge performances to the composite. The thermal battery cell, which was fabricated with such a composite cathode and with a Li-Si anode, can output a capacity of 235.8 mAh g−1and an energy density of 416.9 Wh kg−1at a cut-off voltage of 1.7 V. This carbon coated CoS2composite also presented enhanced air stability. After being stored in dry air for 3 months, the composite can still provide a capacity of 232.4 mAh g−1to 1.7 V, whereas the capacity of bare CoS2stored with the same condition dropped from 202.4 mAh g−1to 189.7 mAh g−1.

Ion migration, which occurs in regular three-dimensional perovskites, is shown to be suppressed in low-dimensional perovskites both in the dark and under illumination, an indication of better stability of these materials for solar cells and light-emitting diodes.

We explore the response of Ir $5d$ orbitals to pressure in $��$-$\mathrm{Li_2IrO_3}$, a hyperhoneycomb iridate in proximity to a Kitaev quantum spin liquid (QSL) ground state. X-ray absorption spectroscopy reveals a reconstruction of the electronic ground state below 2 GPa, the same pressure range where x-ray magnetic circular dichroism shows an apparent collapse of magnetic order. The electronic reconstruction, which manifests a reduction in the effective spin-orbit (SO) interaction in $5d$ orbitals, pushes $��$-$\mathrm{Li_2IrO_3}$ further away from the pure $J_{\rm eff}=1/2$ limit. Although lattice symmetry is preserved across the electronic transition, x-ray diffraction shows a highly anisotropic compression of the hyperhoneycomb lattice which affects the balance of bond-directional Ir-Ir exchange interactions driven by spin-orbit coupling at Ir sites. An enhancement of symmetric anisotropic exchange over Kitaev and Heisenberg exchange interactions seen in theoretical calculations that use precisely this anisotropic Ir-Ir bond compression provides one possible route to realization of a QSL state in this hyperhoneycomb iridate at high pressures.

An adaptive sliding mode controller based on Kalman filter was proposed to reduce load torque ripples and the influence of varying system parameters on the Permanent Magnet Synchronous Motor (PMSM) system. The varying system parameters were evaluated by the adaptive law, and the external disturbance was evaluated by the Kalman filter. The integral action contained in the sliding surface was designed to ensure the steady state error of tracking velocity zero, and the exponential reaching law was employed to increase the reaching speed and to suppress the chattering of sliding mode control. The external disturbance obtained by the Kalman filter was used for feed-forward compensation for the controller output, so the chattering caused by high sliding mode gains was decreased effectively. Experimental results demonstrate that the speed fluctuation is 1 r/min when the motor reaches the steady state of 600 r/min. Compared with the traditional PI controller, the proposed controller decreases the speed fluctuation by 2% when the torque disturbance of 1.6 N m is added at the steady speed of 600 r/min. These data verified by simulation and experimental results indicate that the adaptive sliding mode controller based on Kalman filter has anti-disturbance performance and robustness to the AC servo control systems and shows excellent stability.

To overcome the dependence of the plasma extraction on siphon hydrophilicity in a centrifugal microfluidic chip and to ensure long-term stability and reliability of the microfluidic chip, a compressed air reservoir connected to the blood separated reservoir was proposed to separate the blood in blood separated reservoir at high rotating speeds. Through lowering the spinning speed, the plasma in the separated reservoir was pumped toward the CD-like chip center to release the stored air pressure produced by the rotation at high spinning speeds. Based on the thermodynamics of the isothermal gas, the pneumatic pumping method was modeled, and the model was confirmed by analyzing pumping positions and air compression versus spinning speeds. By using the layered Polymethyl Methacrylate(PMMA)as materials, the centrifugal microfluidic chips for plasma extraction were fabricated with a CO2 laser process technique and the volume of compressed air and the blood position at siphon were tested at different rotational speeds. Experimental results demonstrate that the achieved volume of compression is 8.7L and the siphon valve effectively inhibits whole blood to overflow the crest of siphon at 4 000 r/min speed. With lowering the spin speed to 1 000 r/min, the release of compressed air overcomes the centrifugal force and drives the plasma to flow past the crest of siphon. Then the plasma extraction is realized in quantitation.

Aims. To examine incidence and trends of Type 1 diabetes worldwide for the period 1990–1999. Methods. The incidence of Type 1 diabetes (per 100000/year) was analysed in children aged ≤ 14 years from 114 populations in 112 centres in 57 countries. Trends in the incidence of Type 1 diabetes were analysed by fitting Poisson regression models to the dataset. Results. A total of 43013 cases were diagnosed in the study populations of 84 million children. The age-adjusted incidence of Type 1 diabetes among 112 centres (114 populations) varied from 0.1 per 100000/year in China and Venezuela to 40.9 per 100000/year in Finland. The average annual increase in incidence calculated from 103 centres was 2.8% (95% CI 2.4–3.2%). During the years 1990–1994, this increase was 2.4% (95% CI 1.3–3.4%) and during the second study period of 1995–1999 it was slightly higher at 3.4% (95% CI 2.7– 4.3%). The trends estimated for continents showed statistically significant increases all over the world (4.0% in Asia, 3.2% in Europe and 5.3% in North America), except in Central America and the West Indies where the trend was a decrease of 3.6%. Only among the European populations did the trend in incidence diminish with age. Conclusions. The rising incidence of Type 1 diabetes globally suggests the need for continuous monitoring of incidence by using standardized methods in order to plan or assess prevention strategies.

Ocean acidification (OA), caused by seawater CO2 uptake, has significant impacts on marine calcifying organisms and phototrophs. However, the response of bacterial communities, who play a crucial role in marine biogeochemical cycling, to OA is still not well understood. Previous studies have shown that the diversity and structure of microbial communities change undeterminably with elevated pCO2. Here, novel phylogenetic molecular ecological networks (pMENs) were employed to investigate the interactions of native bacterial communities in response to OA in the Arctic Ocean through a mesocosm experiment. The pMENs results were in line with the null hypothesis that elevated pCO2/pH does not affect biogeochemistry processes. The number of nodes within the pMENs and the connectivity of the bacterial communities were similar, despite increased pCO2 concentrations. Our results indicate that elevated pCO2 did not significantly affect microbial community structure and succession in the Arctic Ocean, suggesting bacterioplankton community resilience to elevated pCO2. The competitive interactions among the native bacterioplankton, as well as the modular community structure, may contribute to this resilience. This pMENs-based investigation of the interactions among microbial community members at different pCO2 concentrations provides a new insight into our understanding of how OA affects the microbial community.

Recent studies revealed common genetic risks for both viral bronchiolitis and asthma. Genome-wide association studies revealed that rs7216389 in the ORMDL3 gene is associated with childhood asthma. We conducted a case-control study examining the associations between ORMDL3 polymorphisms (rs7216389, rs12603332, and rs11650680) and bronchiolitis susceptibility/viral findings among 247 infant bronchiolitis cases and 190 healthy controls. We genotyped single nucleotide polymorphisms by matrix-assisted laser desorption/ionization-time-of-flight mass spectrometry and detected respiratory viruses with multiplex reverse transcriptase-polymerase chain reaction. Only the genotype and allele frequencies of rs7216389 significantly differed between bronchiolitis and controls. The frequencies of the TT homozygote and the T allele of rs7216389 were significantly higher in the bronchiolitis patients (P = 0.0325; P = 0.0089, respectively). Polymorphisms were not associated with bronchiolitis severity. Cases were further stratified by viral infection, but no significant differences in the ORMDL3 genotype between the virus-detected group (e.g., respiratory syncytial virus alone, respiratory virus alone, virus detected) and no-virus-detected group were observed. Bronchiolitis is associated with the ORMDL3 gene in Chinese children, and there were no significant associations between genetic variations and disease severity or respiratory viruses. The TT homozygote and the T allele of rs7216389 in ORMDL3 increased bronchiolitis risk. The rs7216389 polymorphism may be a predictor for identifying infants with predisposition to virus-induced wheezing to persistent asthma.

We present a neural encoder-decoder model to convert images into presentational markup based on a scalable coarse-to-fine attention mechanism. Our method is evaluated in the context of image-to-LaTeX generation, and we introduce a new dataset of real-world rendered mathematical expressions paired with LaTeX markup. We show that unlike neural OCR techniques using CTC-based models, attention-based approaches can tackle this non-standard OCR task. Our approach outperforms classical mathematical OCR systems by a large margin on in-domain rendered data, and, with pretraining, also performs well on out-of-domain handwritten data. To reduce the inference complexity associated with the attention-based approaches, we introduce a new coarse-to-fine attention layer that selects a support region before applying attention., Comment: Accepted by ICML 2017

The goal of this study was to characterize the transcriptome of primary bovine mammalian epithelial cells (pBMECs) and to identify candidate genes for response and resistance to Staphylococcus aureus (strain S108), Escherichia coli (strain E23), and Klebsiella pneumoniae (strain K96) infection. Using Solexa sequencing, approximately 4.9 million total sequence tags were obtained from each of the three infected libraries and the control library. Gene Ontology (GO) analysis of the S108-infected pBMECs showed differentially expressed genes (DEGs) were significantly involved in metabolic processes. In E23-infected pBMECs, DEGs were predominantly associated with cell death and programmed cell death GO terms, while in K96-infected pBMECs, DEGs were primarily involved in metabolic processes and in utero embryonic development. Analysis of the cluster of orthologous groups of proteins showed that the S108-infected, E23-infected and K96-infected pBMECs were significantly involved in "Translation, ribosomal structure and biogenesis", "General function prediction only" and "Replication, recombination and repair". The transcriptome sequences were also annotated for KEGG orthology, and it was found that DEGs in S108-infected pBMECs were significantly involved in oxidative phosphorylation and Parkinson's disease. The clustered pathway terms of the DEGs of the E23-infected pBMECs were found to involve the NOD-like receptor signaling pathway and oxidative phosphorylation, while those of the K96-infected pBMECs were primarily involved in oxidative phosphorylation and apoptosis. Our results have identified a number of immune-related genes that showed changes in gene expression after bacterial infection, and provided insight into the interactions between pBMECs and the bacteria.

© 2015, American Society for Microbiology. A pilot-scale field experiment demonstrated that a one-time amendment of emulsified vegetable oil (EVO) reduced groundwater U(VI) concentrations for 1 year in a fast-flowing aquifer. However, little is known about how EVO amendment stimulates the functional gene composition, structure, and dynamics of groundwater microbial communities toward prolonged U(VI) reduction. In this study, we hypothesized that EVO amendment would shift the functional gene composition and structure of groundwater microbial communities and stimulate key functional genes/groups involved in EVO biodegradation and reduction of electron acceptors in the aquifer. To test these hypotheses, groundwater microbial communities after EVO amendment were analyzed using a comprehensive functional gene microarray. Our results showed that EVO amendment stimulated sequential shifts in the functional composition and structure of groundwater microbial communities. Particularly, the relative abundance of key functional genes/groups involved in EVO biodegradation and the reduction of NO3 -, Mn(IV), Fe(III), U(VI), and SO4 2- significantly increased, especially during the active U(VI) reduction period. The relative abundance for some of these key functional genes/groups remained elevated over 9 months. Montel tests suggested that the dynamics in the abundance, composition, and structure of these key functional genes/groups were significantly correlated with groundwater concentrations of acetate, NO3 -, Mn(II), Fe(II), U(VI), and SO4 2-. Our results suggest that EVO amendment stimulated dynamic succession of key functional microbial communities. This study improves our understanding of the composition, structure, and function changes needed for groundwater microbial communities to sustain a long-term U(VI) reduction.